Transformation of indigenous peoples’ Ecological conciousness

Abstract

The world of Indigenous ecological reality has a spatial and temporal structure. The need for a favorable natural environment, sufficient natural resources’ quantity and quality, as well as env ironmental security has been permanently present in autochtonous existence. Researchers of North American and Siberian indigenous peoples’ ecological identity agree that of the two criteria, spatial structure plays more important role than temporal. The indigenous peoples’ spatial identity is linked to their deep conviction that everything in the world “stops” periodically, so if you pray in the right locality, where higher powers are most likely to stop at that very moment, prayer would be heard. Thus the feeling of attachment to ethnic homeland is crucial in the process of creating an ethnic niche. Most of the Indigenous people believe that their nations were created at the territory they live now, so this locus is the center of the universe for them. The past and the future are understood by the natives at the level of physical perceptible sound, visual, tactile and sensory sensations, thus the concept of the sacred landscape is formed, and each nation has its own notion of it. Indigenous writers sometimes shift temporal-spatial layers, superimposing chronotopic planes, suspending astronomical time, thus destroying the boundaries of the real world and at the same time creating fascinating spaces that are an important part of the indigenous spatial identity. Thus, spatiality functions in fictional texts as a stylistic device designed to express the opposition of different worlds.